Flexibility in Lesson Planning

Hi everyone! Welcome back to a new weakly entry. Today I´m going to reviuew a couple of very important things related to the translation and interpreting market, so you can take a seat and get ready for a blog full of useful info!

 

We began our class with a survey. We helped teacher Brendaly with some senior students who are working on their college thesis project. I was glad we could be part of it, and I was happy I could rehearse sight translation, it had been a while since we last practiced this in our fourth year of the major. I hope to look to their job when they´re done!

 

Then, we had a visitor in the classroom, we welcomed Regina, a current student of the major who has 20 or more years of experience in the interpreting and translation field. She talked about prices, what to charge, and when to use the different modes of interpreting since many of us are starting to make an income out of the field, so it is important for us to know some important tips, for instance: as professionals we are, It is essential that we have an insight on the different professional code of ethics, she recommended that we read, Aiic, ATA, AGIT norms and standards to rise our quality as much as we can.

 

Regina also shared with us the standard prices. And encouraged us to make a good living out of this major, it is possible if we are qualified and know the standards because translations are expensive and it´s unacceptable that we charge $5 per page. The standard is from $15-$20 per page. We can also charge per word and the average for that would be $0.08 - $0.15.

 

Regina also advised us to work in our quotations with all the necessary details, such as services including rate per hour/document, methods for the payment, and due dates. I also learned from her that we should be charging for a minimum of 2 hours in the case of interpreting, even if the client says the event will take less, that is rarely the case. Finally, I took advantage of this chance and asked her what she thought about my quotation, and she liked it! She gave me a couple of more tips and I felt it was a really rewarding talk. 😊

 

Now, talking about our English Didactics Class… We missed more than half an hour, but it was so ad hoc with what we had been reviewing: Magical moments, and flexibility. So, Regina and her talk were indeed an example of the flexibility that must exist in the classroom. Teacher Orlando knew that this was a necessary topic for us, so he never interrupted, on the contrary, he contributed to the topic. Some ideas I recall are that even when a grammatical structure was not planned for a specific session if it is a good moment to teach it, we should go ahead and do so. We also reviewed objectives and what I recall from this is that objectives need to have time-bound, we need to be specific in the topic we will teach, we need to state what are the expected results, and they need to be evident, and realistic. Also, we should know that things in the classroom can be “simple, yet effective” And that production has to match our objectives.

Unfortunately, I didn´t take part in Teachers Up workshop, I am looking forward to hearing from my classmates and to get to learn more about teaching. 😊

That´s it for today! Thank you so much for reading this far, bye-bye